Tap Tempo

This tap tempo footswitch controller was designed to display the tempo that was most recently tapped. This project was a fun experiment into the Adafruit Trinket world but will not become a product that we sell. All credit for the code goes to Phillip Burgess and his project page can be found here if you’d like to build your own or get more information on how the circuit works.

Some interesting parts of this project include how to interface a tap tempo footswitch with another delay pedal. The problem being that some delay pedals will average together your inputs and other pedals will simply take the time between the last two inputs. The tempo displayed will be 100% correct to what was entered but your pedal may actually be at a different rate depending on how it interprets your inputs. Other considerations include how practical is this? At the end of the day it’s a fun toy, but I’m not sure if knowing the tempo is going to matter for most applications.

And some general tech specs: 125B enclosure, soft touch foot switch, 9V DC input at around 20-50mA of power usage, two ¼” jacks to control two delay pedals and the option to add as many outputs as needed. For any DIYers I strongly recommend going slow and hand filing the cutout for the screen as it was by far the most time consuming part of the project.